Ask any artist: Adding a little hair stubble really steps up your art work.
OK, only one artist would admit to that, and his name is Ryan Thies.
Thies is showing his stubble-filled drawings in an exhibit called “Fingies N Things” at the Museum of Unfine Art and Record Store through August 14.
The artist said his appreciation of hair stubble grew from his love for the process of using small dots to mimic shading called stippling.
“I like to call it Pubism,” Thies said.
“Throwing a little hair stubble on it just takes it to the next level.”
Thies’s psychedelic 2-dimensional pop art is definitely geared toward a more mature audience.
His work is vibrant and loud and features everything from abstract appendages to toilets.
It is supposed to be amusing, first and foremost, he said. Although he takes art very seriously, he makes a point not to take himself too seriously.
“Some people don’t really appreciate my brand of humor,” he said.
Thies said that it was pure luck that he found a place like the Museum of Unfine Art to exhibit his unique work.
He was in Eugene visiting a friend that goes to the University and stumbled upon the Museum.
Thies said he loves Eugene’s atmosphere and thinks people here are receptive to his work.
“My intentions were to do something unusual, and I feel like I can get away with that here,” he said.
The Texan native, who has been drawing since he was a child, was once an Oregon resident.
Thies’s father lived in Roseburg for a while, so he spent some of his high school career in the state.
Since he moved around a lot, he never had a chance to take a serious art class.
“I didn’t get to take the basic-level art class until I was a senior in high school,” he said.
“All we did was learn the color wheel and boring stuff like that.”
Thies said his art skills came naturally.
After graduating high school in 1999, he took several years to perfect his technique.
He said at first, his work was more innocent and deliberate because he was afraid to offend people.
After showing his more perverse work to his friends, he gained enough confidence to show it to the public.
He had his first exhibition in 2002 and has been promoting his art ever since.
Thies promotes his art shows in a very unusual way he likes to call Stubberfoam.
He sings and plays acoustic guitar in random public spaces while wearing large foam hands and sometimes several pairs of sunglasses.
“Since I’m on foot most of the time, the audience is changing all the time,” he said.
“I only know a few songs but no one ever notices.”
Thies said his favorite aspect of his art is the discomfort it causes.
He wants it to confuse and perplex people.
“It makes it a little more interesting if you cannot immediately identify what’s going on in a piece,” he said.
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